TCP/IP, C, Television, Radio, Mobile Phones, mp3 etc. standards (esp. for data interchange) are very important. Possibly _only_ important for data exchange.
I wouldn't follow a Mozilla only route either. Apps written for a browser should work on any browser. I suspect Windows/IE support should be at the top of the list as this accounts for a colosal number of users.
It's true - I hate to have a go but Lisp is NOT a proedural language. It is a FUNCTIONAL language.
With a few nasty side effects....
Results of my brief comparisons
on
Phoenix 0.3 Is Out
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
And they had better be optimising for speed!
I downloaded it straight away to have a look and apart from not rendering tables the same way as IE (something to do with pixel positioning and sizing - probly my fault) I notices it is not that fast.
A brief comparison of a little demo I did (www.freshbrains.co.uk) - this is a bunch of simple transparent sprites boinging around) shows that IE6 is about 2 to 2.5 times faster than Phoenix (which I assmue is the Gecko core).
Because otherwise the 99% of the human population who know little to nothing about modern science and don't even watch the news would never get "hooked" by anything. "Life on X" is popular at the mo' there have been many others "The Might Atom" for example.
I think the theory is that you have a coupla "whizz bang" announcments a year and hope that enough people get into the sciencey thing and become inventors, engineers, fizzysists etc...
Otherwise most people would go back to watching "Big Brother" or "Pop Idol" or some equally vacuous "entertainment"... after many years of this the TV system would eventually fall into disrepair and the ensuing social chaos would cause untold destruction.
All coding is serial... you can never avoid that. You are taking the result of an operation and passing it back into that operations inputs.
Registers just help this process saving memory reads. Although you still have to read that data from somewhere.
I've programmed the 80 series TI DSP chips and it blows basically I've never coding in such a difficult way. The trick with stack machines is to make them simple and fast and load lots of them onto a die - they each have their own addressable memory space rather than cache and of course each has a stack.... wire together on a bus and go parallel with threads rather than ILP. Much like the transputer.
There is a world of difference between a stack mahine and a ternary bit machine (is that a tit?!).
A stack machine can easily be built with digital (proven & cheap) technology. They are highly efficient. If you've ever watched the flow of data through algorithms and the inter-dependencies of that data the stack machine suddenly looks very tempting.
They also have simple address spaces. The 386 have numerous address spaces to cope with - registers, memory address space, IO address space. A stack machine (usually) only has a single address space - that of external memory.
You can code to the metal with something that looks and acts like a high level language.
A very immediate and usable computer system I'd say!
1 - Zero Cost. 2 - Backwards Compatible. 3 - Orders of magnitude.
1 - You have to buy new chips - this will improve the speed of "computing" but it will not increase the speed of THIS computer I have right HERE.
2 - No old code has RM/RMC instructions in it and will NOT run any faster than it already does in a "standard" x86 mode. Yes it is backwards compat. but by the same token so is MMX, EMMX, 3DNOW!, SSE, SSEII, AA64 etc....
3 - Anyone who can sell me a program to "suddenly" make all my code go 10x or 100x faster is garaunteed to give me a good chuckle!!!!!!!
As for the aritcle... well you've hugely increased the number of bits it takes to address a register and swapping the RM register is going to cause all sorts of new dependency chains inside the chip.
Personally.... I'd go for a stack machine. Easily the most efficient compute engine.
Now - if we could get back to point number 1 and point number 3. If YOU can make MY computer go 10 or 100 times FAST with SOFTWARE I promise I WILL give YOU some MONEY....;-)
Re:Not sure about cooking up a Python, but...
on
The Python Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
Seesm to me (last page of the story) that if they did indeed ahve all these projects running concurrently they would have over-burdeoned their engineers.
There doesn't seem to be enough spread in the sorts of products they where going to fab either. They needed to break out of just pure graphics chips and produce a better range for those on different budgets. It's all well and good shooting for the high end BUT nV still sell bucket loads of TNT2 type cards.
The most computationally expensive thing most users ever do is DVD playback - Just about any off the shelf PC CPU will do this. I'm still running a slotted K7-500. BUT I got a nice (reasonably fast) IDE drive and plety of RAM. Most users don't even know what they are paying for. They don't understand computer architecture and neither should they have to.
Users want to buy on features rather than performance.
Personally I think that without new features that users want (and I don't mean OS updates) computers will have to start to be sold on the bundle, the style (I mean the physical look and interface).
TBH I don't think most users even give a damn what OS the thing is running although backwards compatibility is often an issue.
What most office users want -
A spreadsheet A wordprocessor Some simple database package (possibly) Email Calendar Contacts organiser HTTP/HTML is nice cos' it lets companies divorce the app from the OS - all you need is a nice browser.
What home users want -
A wordprocessor EMail Websurfing Games (possibly - most don't give a monkies) Graphics package (that can plug into their camera) Some want music packages (me!) DTP seems to be a popular choice but a decent WP would sort most out (they want clipart)
Computers (esp PCs) are NOT designed for home living, they consume too much power, they are ugly, large, noisy etc....
They are small devices - they require no maintenance - the chances of failure are low - they allow you to accomplish your task quickly (getting to play the game) - they make little noise - software compatibility is assured (well across any given platform) - It is more likely that a console will be set up in the living room than a PC - They are often placed on the floor and thus evoke memories of childhood playing (for those of you that aren't children) - Shared game playing is possible e.g. drinkin' beer with yer mates and beating the hell out of 'em in SMB - You don't have to pay MS if you don't want to....;-) Oh.... the controllers are usually superb.
Still running a K7-500 and it works fine. The only taxing app _most_ people run are wild 3D games that will just eat as much machine as possible (good software engineering I reckon - nicely scalable). But..... It won't hurt AMD. Itanium2 isn't gonna sink them, the PC market is in recession, anyone who bought a machine in the last 5 years won't need to upgrade for a while.
All I want from Hammer is the 64bit address space. If you write apps with big data (like simulators) you'll be hapy for that address space - hey! just map the whole harddrive into memory the memory space.
I think people need to find _better_ things to do with technology not just _faster_.
I wouldn't be!!! They can churn out huge amounts of cheap chips - about 1Ghz, all with wireless links, all running Linux.... hell put the OS in the firmware.... then they will fill offices with them! There's no use selling 1 computer to a company, you need to sell a complete system for it to be garaunteed sale esp. if you can cut great chunks out of the cost. Customization is easy BTW..... Windows costs extra... perhaps they won't though!
1 - Eat organic food - especially meat. Avoid growth hormones and unnecessary antibiotics (you might need them one day and increased exposure reduces the beneficial effects.
2 - Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, the UK recommendation is 5 portions a day. I eat far more than this - but then I REALLY like fruit.
3 - Eat FISH - fish is very good for you (NO! don't eat fugu liver...)
4 - Drink plenty of liquids but don't go overboard on caffine - there are many green teas that have low levels of caffine - my fav is a green ginseng tea - few cups of that in the morning and my brain is soon back in gear!
5 - Avoid crisps, chips, fat, burgers, sweets, chocolate etc, etc - HOWEVER this DOES NOT mean don't eat them - they taste good and therefore the psychological effect of eating something you enjoy probably outweighs the negative effect on you body!
If you think this all sounds like a bit of a drag it really doesn't have to be. It is just about changing your habits in subtle ways - buy a big big of apples (for example) and eat one of those instead of that packet of crisps, chocolate or whatever you snack on at work. b4 u know it your getting 2 or 3 portions of fruit a day. easy!
Another tip - buy a steamer - I got a good steamer for less than 20quid - All you have to do is take all you veggies - chop 'em up and bung 'em in (spuds take longer). There is very little washing up and it requires virtually no attention (and doesn't take long) - combine this with a grilled chop or fish and there you go - shouldn't take more than 20->25 minutes to do dinner..... and it's better than lard.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS..... balance - most natural food stuffs are of some benefit to you - do not eat the same thing all the time - the world is your lobster - there is more food out there than even I could eat!
And lastly - leave the car at home.... if it isn't far and it's a nice day then walk - don't run or jog (it'll do you knees in!!!) walk - walk everywhere - carry your shopping back from the shops - walk to the shops - walk everywhere - it is very good for you and unlike being stuck in your car you'll get to see a lot more stuff. Perhaps take up some physical activity - I never really have done because I find myself to be quite an active person anyway but I LURV my rollerblades....
In each 32 bit channel there are 3 channels, 10bits per channel. that's 1024 values per channel. (there are 2 "extra" bits too)
A 2048 pixel wide display would mean a 2:1 ratio of screen pixels to colour range. Which means even this card can't generate enough colour range per channel to adequately colour the screen.
Personally I think the digital transmission system should be handed over to the BBC (as they used to own and run the analogue system) - I suspect they're the only organisation that could actually get people to watch it AND utilise the possibility of data display as well as video.
They have a long history of stuff like this - they "sponsored" the BBC model computers - they transmitted computer programs over the airwaves years ago - They still seem to like teletext which is rapidly becoming obsolete AND they have a pretty good website setup too. I seem to remember multiformat computer casettes as well.
In 2010 it could be sold off with the government keeping a "golden share". AFAIK it still has this in the analogue system.
All you need now is a good receiver/decoder (set top box) - I'm not sure this is ready yet. Some of the STBs in the UK are DIRE!!! The Telewest Digital box should be studied by EVERYBODY doing HCI as a example of how NOT to build a user interface!!!! Slow, clunky, confusing and the remote was not designed - they simply took a load of buttons and stuck the to a brick! I'd far rather have a Gamecube than more TV.....
Slashdot Mirror
TCP/IP, C, Television, Radio, Mobile Phones, mp3 etc. standards (esp. for data interchange) are very important. Possibly _only_ important for data exchange.
I wouldn't follow a Mozilla only route either. Apps written for a browser should work on any browser. I suspect Windows/IE support should be at the top of the list as this accounts for a colosal number of users.
BTW www.w3c.org and www.ecma.ch
It's true - I hate to have a go but Lisp is NOT a proedural language. It is a FUNCTIONAL language.
With a few nasty side effects....
And they had better be optimising for speed!
I downloaded it straight away to have a look and apart from not rendering tables the same way as IE (something to do with pixel positioning and sizing - probly my fault) I notices it is not that fast.
A brief comparison of a little demo I did (www.freshbrains.co.uk) - this is a bunch of simple transparent sprites boinging around) shows that IE6 is about 2 to 2.5 times faster than Phoenix (which I assmue is the Gecko core).
Still a way to go! But yer gettin there!
The only problem with an ignorant population is that they can be pushed around by credible, misinformed people....
I mean.... just look at marketing and advertising.....
Because otherwise the 99% of the human population who know little to nothing about modern science and don't even watch the news would never get "hooked" by anything. "Life on X" is popular at the mo' there have been many others "The Might Atom" for example.
I think the theory is that you have a coupla "whizz bang" announcments a year and hope that enough people get into the sciencey thing and become inventors, engineers, fizzysists etc...
Otherwise most people would go back to watching "Big Brother" or "Pop Idol" or some equally vacuous "entertainment"... after many years of this the TV system would eventually fall into disrepair and the ensuing social chaos would cause untold destruction.
probly.
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/in dex.html
All coding is serial... you can never avoid that. You are taking the result of an operation and passing it back into that operations inputs.
;-)
Registers just help this process saving memory reads. Although you still have to read that data from somewhere.
I've programmed the 80 series TI DSP chips and it blows basically I've never coding in such a difficult way. The trick with stack machines is to make them simple and fast and load lots of them onto a die - they each have their own addressable memory space rather than cache and of course each has a stack.... wire together on a bus and go parallel with threads rather than ILP. Much like the transputer.
Anyway.... I'm going to get drunk
Hang on a second mate!!!!
There is a world of difference between a stack mahine and a ternary bit machine (is that a tit?!).
A stack machine can easily be built with digital (proven & cheap) technology. They are highly efficient. If you've ever watched the flow of data through algorithms and the inter-dependencies of that data the stack machine suddenly looks very tempting.
They also have simple address spaces. The 386 have numerous address spaces to cope with - registers, memory address space, IO address space. A stack machine (usually) only has a single address space - that of external memory.
You can code to the metal with something that looks and acts like a high level language.
A very immediate and usable computer system I'd say!
You are VERY confused.
;-)
1 - Zero Cost. 2 - Backwards Compatible. 3 - Orders of magnitude.
1 - You have to buy new chips - this will improve the speed of "computing" but it will not increase the speed of THIS computer I have right HERE.
2 - No old code has RM/RMC instructions in it and will NOT run any faster than it already does in a "standard" x86 mode. Yes it is backwards compat. but by the same token so is MMX, EMMX, 3DNOW!, SSE, SSEII, AA64 etc....
3 - Anyone who can sell me a program to "suddenly" make all my code go 10x or 100x faster is garaunteed to give me a good chuckle!!!!!!!
As for the aritcle... well you've hugely increased the number of bits it takes to address a register and swapping the RM register is going to cause all sorts of new dependency chains inside the chip.
Personally.... I'd go for a stack machine. Easily the most efficient compute engine.
Now - if we could get back to point number 1 and point number 3. If YOU can make MY computer go 10 or 100 times FAST with SOFTWARE I promise I WILL give YOU some MONEY....
Score:6 MMMmmm... Rattle snake...
>The Stamper brothers were present, but did not
>speak - probably too stunned by the fact that
>they're now stinking rich
Shouldn't that be "probably stunned by being even more stinky rich than the stinkingly rich level of stinky richness they achieved 20 years ago".
Said Chris "Jeez! I didn't think we could actually make anymore money than we already had!".
Tim said "WOW! We only write 1 game a year".
On a final note Chris was heard to say "WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
I only thought muslim fundementalism was evil before seeing some people like you.
Think of the crusades!!! Won't somebody think of the crusades!!!!!
Seesm to me (last page of the story) that if they did indeed ahve all these projects running concurrently they would have over-burdeoned their engineers.
There doesn't seem to be enough spread in the sorts of products they where going to fab either. They needed to break out of just pure graphics chips and produce a better range for those on different budgets. It's all well and good shooting for the high end BUT nV still sell bucket loads of TNT2 type cards.
Darn tootin!
The most computationally expensive thing most users ever do is DVD playback - Just about any off the shelf PC CPU will do this. I'm still running a slotted K7-500. BUT I got a nice (reasonably fast) IDE drive and plety of RAM. Most users don't even know what they are paying for. They don't understand computer architecture and neither should they have to.
Users want to buy on features rather than performance.
Personally I think that without new features that users want (and I don't mean OS updates) computers will have to start to be sold on the bundle, the style (I mean the physical look and interface).
TBH I don't think most users even give a damn what OS the thing is running although backwards compatibility is often an issue.
What most office users want -
A spreadsheet
A wordprocessor
Some simple database package (possibly)
Email
Calendar
Contacts organiser
HTTP/HTML is nice cos' it lets companies divorce the app from the OS - all you need is a nice browser.
What home users want -
A wordprocessor
EMail
Websurfing
Games (possibly - most don't give a monkies)
Graphics package (that can plug into their camera)
Some want music packages (me!)
DTP seems to be a popular choice but a decent WP would sort most out (they want clipart)
Computers (esp PCs) are NOT designed for home living, they consume too much power, they are ugly, large, noisy etc....
Sell on features and aesthetics not Mhz...
They are small devices - they require no maintenance - the chances of failure are low - they allow you to accomplish your task quickly (getting to play the game) - they make little noise - software compatibility is assured (well across any given platform) - It is more likely that a console will be set up in the living room than a PC - They are often placed on the floor and thus evoke memories of childhood playing (for those of you that aren't children) - Shared game playing is possible e.g. drinkin' beer with yer mates and beating the hell out of 'em in SMB - You don't have to pay MS if you don't want to.... ;-) Oh.... the controllers are usually superb.
H3Y! 5kru u! u 4 b16 r4t b4|z 1 s4y ;-P h4x0r 5p33k 41nt 60t nuf1nk 2 d0 w1v A-H0l3-l4mrz!
1tz 0ld5k00l 5k1|zz d00d! 1t 1z 4rt 1 r30nz...
v41rz 55550000 m4n33 p4tt3rnz 0n d4 k33-B 1 j^5t w4nn4 ^z3 3m 4| v4 t1m3!!!! l00k @ v15.... f^
0 y34h!!! ~ $0r 'b0^t r34dN v15 v0....
Still running a K7-500 and it works fine. The only taxing app _most_ people run are wild 3D games that will just eat as much machine as possible (good software engineering I reckon - nicely scalable). But..... It won't hurt AMD. Itanium2 isn't gonna sink them, the PC market is in recession, anyone who bought a machine in the last 5 years won't need to upgrade for a while.
All I want from Hammer is the 64bit address space. If you write apps with big data (like simulators) you'll be hapy for that address space - hey! just map the whole harddrive into memory the memory space.
I think people need to find _better_ things to do with technology not just _faster_.
Matthew.
OF COURSE THEY DO!!!! Where do you think they get those little bubbles for spirit levels?
Just can't get Atari out of my head? Y would Apple port OS-X to the Jag? O! I C!
I wouldn't be!!! They can churn out huge amounts of cheap chips - about 1Ghz, all with wireless links, all running Linux.... hell put the OS in the firmware.... then they will fill offices with them! There's no use selling 1 computer to a company, you need to sell a complete system for it to be garaunteed sale esp. if you can cut great chunks out of the cost. Customization is easy BTW..... Windows costs extra... perhaps they won't though!
Can we simulate all the lawyers and bean counters and keep the actors please??? ;->
PPP
1 - Eat organic food - especially meat. Avoid growth hormones and unnecessary antibiotics (you might need them one day and increased exposure reduces the beneficial effects.
2 - Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, the UK recommendation is 5 portions a day. I eat far more than this - but then I REALLY like fruit.
3 - Eat FISH - fish is very good for you (NO! don't eat fugu liver...)
4 - Drink plenty of liquids but don't go overboard on caffine - there are many green teas that have low levels of caffine - my fav is a green ginseng tea - few cups of that in the morning and my brain is soon back in gear!
5 - Avoid crisps, chips, fat, burgers, sweets, chocolate etc, etc - HOWEVER this DOES NOT mean don't eat them - they taste good and therefore the psychological effect of eating something you enjoy probably outweighs the negative effect on you body!
If you think this all sounds like a bit of a drag it really doesn't have to be. It is just about changing your habits in subtle ways - buy a big big of apples (for example) and eat one of those instead of that packet of crisps, chocolate or whatever you snack on at work. b4 u know it your getting 2 or 3 portions of fruit a day. easy!
Another tip - buy a steamer - I got a good steamer for less than 20quid - All you have to do is take all you veggies - chop 'em up and bung 'em in (spuds take longer). There is very little washing up and it requires virtually no attention (and doesn't take long) - combine this with a grilled chop or fish and there you go - shouldn't take more than 20->25 minutes to do dinner..... and it's better than lard.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS..... balance - most natural food stuffs are of some benefit to you - do not eat the same thing all the time - the world is your lobster - there is more food out there than even I could eat!
And lastly - leave the car at home.... if it isn't far and it's a nice day then walk - don't run or jog (it'll do you knees in!!!) walk - walk everywhere - carry your shopping back from the shops - walk to the shops - walk everywhere - it is very good for you and unlike being stuck in your car you'll get to see a lot more stuff. Perhaps take up some physical activity - I never really have done because I find myself to be quite an active person anyway but I LURV my rollerblades....
L8rs...
This is a petty reply.... worst case.
In each 32 bit channel there are 3 channels, 10bits per channel. that's 1024 values per channel. (there are 2 "extra" bits too)
A 2048 pixel wide display would mean a 2:1 ratio of screen pixels to colour range. Which means even this card can't generate enough colour range per channel to adequately colour the screen.
MY EYES! I can't stand it!
You want me to rim my CDs???? How gay do you have to be artist these days? Isn't this discrimination?????
;->
I AGREE!
Personally I think the digital transmission system should be handed over to the BBC (as they used to own and run the analogue system) - I suspect they're the only organisation that could actually get people to watch it AND utilise the possibility of data display as well as video.
They have a long history of stuff like this - they "sponsored" the BBC model computers - they transmitted computer programs over the airwaves years ago - They still seem to like teletext which is rapidly becoming obsolete AND they have a pretty good website setup too. I seem to remember multiformat computer casettes as well.
In 2010 it could be sold off with the government keeping a "golden share". AFAIK it still has this in the analogue system.
All you need now is a good receiver/decoder (set top box) - I'm not sure this is ready yet. Some of the STBs in the UK are DIRE!!! The Telewest Digital box should be studied by EVERYBODY doing HCI as a example of how NOT to build a user interface!!!! Slow, clunky, confusing and the remote was not designed - they simply took a load of buttons and stuck the to a brick! I'd far rather have a Gamecube than more TV.....
L8rs!